Apple patented a pizza box, for pizzas

Friday, 16 June 2017, 12:46:59 AM. Apple’s brand-new campus is starting to open up to employees, and Wired got to step inside for an early look at the incredibly elaborate building. The article highlights a bunch of thoughtful and...

Apple’s brand-new campus is starting to open up to employees, and Wired got to step inside for an early look at the incredibly elaborate building. The article highlights a bunch of thoughtful and often excessive architectural touches — from making sure rain doesn’t streak on the glass to using water cooling so that the air conditioning rarely kicks on because Steve Jobs hated fans — but perhaps the true standout detail from the piece is that Apple invented its own pizza box for its cafeteria, because it obviously couldn’t settle for what was already out there.

The container is more of a pizza circle than a pizza box, and it appears to be sized for personal pies. Wired says it’s meant for letting employees take pizza from the cafeteria back to their desks.

Apple’s big innovation here is placing a series of holes in the lid of the container so that air can escape, helping avoid sogginess in the crust. It’s a thoughtful addition, although I’ve eaten a lot of pizza in my life and have to say the boxed-in sogginess issue is not that pervasive.

Image: Apple

Apple applied for a patent on this pizza box design seven years ago, and it seems to have been using it at existing campuses, too. The patent lists Francesco Longoni, the head of Apple’s food services team, as one of its inventors.

The Guardian dug up this tweet showing one of the pizza boxes signed by Apple employees after Jobs’ death:

@mantia @panzer the Caffè Macs pizza box is nice and when Steve Jobs died was signed by many Apple Food's employees pic.twitter.com/wG5A63C3xc

— setteB.IT (@setteBIT) December 19, 2013

This isn’t the first storage and transportation mechanism we’ve seen Apple patent either. It was recently awarded a patent on the design of a paper bag.

No word yet on what kind of toppings the Apple cafeteria offers.

Update May 16th, 10:30AM ET: Apple has been using this design at its existing campuses, so it’s not new to the Apple Park location, as originally stated.